


Under Ash

by Missy



Category: Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Little Red Riding Hood - All Media Types, Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Magic, Curses, Dark, Dark Magic, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 05:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7030279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The other side of happily ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Ash

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maitimiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maitimiel/gifts).



There’s a light in the woods, at the heart of the fire. She must return there to its flickering, streaming heart every year, to see that the bones have been laid and dressed properly; to be assured that they and the pelt haven’t been moved, stolen. Picked up for soup or boiled in a ritual. The girl is their protector, their guardian. And they are the reason why she cannot rest until she finds the strength to bury them deep in the woods, under stone, under earth, until the fearsome memory of the beast is nothing but a memory.

She was the one who slew the wolf. They said that the huntsman did it to protect her innocence, but her grandmother knew Red was the one who hefted the ax, who cut the wolf’s belly wide open and spilled organs and spume across the floor. She was the one who held a shaking hand to the woodsman and her grandmother, who saved them both from a fate too horrifying to comprehend within the depths of the wolf’s belly. 

The death was a fair one. Everyone said so. But the malevolent glimmer in the wolf’s eyes made her shiver, pause. There was something too human about it.

Something too mystical.

She allowed the woodsman to take the pelt for his own use. He died of a heart attack and later his cabin burned down, leaving only the pelt intact in the smoldering ruins.

____________________________________________________

“Did you conjure the wolf?” Red dared to ask her grandmother on a foggy, humid night. They were crammed together under a quilt, shivering in the cold in the middle of the night. “I know you were worried about the huntsmen poaching on your land. Is it true? Was it witchcraft?”

Grandmother’s expression darkened. “Don’t speak of what you cannot comprehend,” she ordered, as if her lack of truth telling hasn’t stymied Red for years and kept the full knowledge of that terrible day in permanent, grayed-out mystery.

She didn’t ask again. Didn’t want to hurt her grandmother or upset her at this late stage. The old woman passed away a few years later, and her bones joined the wolf’s under the limestone steps of the basement.

 

____________________________________________________

Red grew lean and smart. Time marched on beneath her feet but she only grew smarter, more cautious. She stuck to the woods and kept to the mountains that understood her best. She hunted for her food and prowled among the trappers and smugglers. Perfect was an impossibility when you were the guardian mother to a dark secret; when you were wedded to the truth and it was your hot-blooded bride. 

Red waited for the right moon. The right phase. She thought that she had the secret, culled from scraps of her grandmother’s diary. She must not fail, or humanity would be led to its darkest hour.

 

____________________________________________________

Her hair was snow white when the moon entered its proper phase. The blood moon. 

Bones were charred to ash, words said, salt thrown over her shoulder. The red rose light kissed her skin. She became part of the flames without burning alive.

She extinguished the flames and waited, waited, waited.


End file.
